Aug. 19, 2002 - 23:03 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

I See The Sea

I have read that life came from the sea. If that is how the good Lord willed it -- so it did. I won't get into any philosophical or religious argument about that. There is for me a love of the sea. A land born and bound Colorado boy who didn't see salt water until he was 29 years old. But had longed for it, reading stories of the sea and dreaming.

Since then I have seen and been on the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean and Carribranean as well.

I have never been disappointed. The oceans are so vast and have so much for me to love. From the critters of the depths to the shore birds I feel as if I am in a place I have always belonged. A path of moonlight across the water I walk on in spirit. A hot sun on the shiny, glassy water is my second home.

Sailing once with Heather on a cruise, aft in seats, hand in hand watching the wake and the aforementioned moon path exchanging loving words of enjoyment about being there - on the sea - with each other - and watching the past go past.

The sea has as its borders many fascinating lands, languages, people who look a bit different but have the same desires as all of us. Mate, family, survival with a bit of comfort to go with it. Meeting them and conversing with those who have English as this tongue tangled Yank could not pick up any Asian lingo in the short times he was there.

On the sea, or above it either way I look at my watery home with the feeling I am growing fins and gills. Weird old man, that's me but I don't bother others with my fantasies.

On land, even the land of my home town, Denver, Colorado was once under salt water eons ago. El Centro, California where the Naval Air Station is was once sea bed and obvious fossils of a low grade are strewn over the terrain. I remember being at Olympus. Greece and seeing the shells in the columns at the site of the first Olympic games. If it isn't there it once was. I always feel much better at seaside or near to it.

The romance of the sea in all its aspects is gripping from the placid lapping of the waves at the shore to the mountainous waves raised by the shrieking winds, it is the sea that draws me beside it.

Oh, if I were the poet that Bobby Burns was and the musician who put Flow Gently Sweet Afton before the world and my eyes early in elementary school -- I would make music about the sea, poetry of the best.

Sometimes at night when I wake from pain, I get up sit for a spell and getting just a wee bit drowsy lay me down in my bed and play in my mind Flow Gently Sweet Afton to go to sleep by and know it is bringing me to my beloved, soon I See The Sea . . . . . . .

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